by Nikky Kaye
My own gaze swung up and down him, taking in his clenched fists and jaw. “I am a qualified professional, taking care of your mother—unlike some people.”
I hadn’t realized how close I’d gotten to him until he reeled back, like I’d just slapped him.
Michelle sucked in a breath by the door. Yeah, I’d hear about that later, for sure. My professional qualifications did not include insulting the patients’ family members, but I was hurt and embarrassed and angry—and saying all the wrong things because of it.
Part of me wanted to lean toward him again, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to punch him or just… reach out.
“Serena…”
His voice went straight to some secret part of me that throbbed and ached inside me—half shame and half longing. It was a feeling that I’d thought I’d pushed down and snubbed out since high school. Guess not.
“I grew up in the last ten years, Marcus. Did you?”
“Marcus?”
Mrs. Blake’s voice broke through the crackling energy between us. Maybe it had just taken her a few minutes to remember him. Maybe she recognized the venomous tone of his voice. God, I hoped not.
“I—hi, Mom.”
No. His voice softened, his anger dulled and his fingers stretching out against his thighs. Something inside me melted, as everything about him slid sideways, slanting into something softer when he faced his mother.
Why was I noticing how his pants fit? Get it together, Serena!
Getting to the door would have been easier if he moved out of my way. His shoulder brushed against mine, turning us both to stone. It was like an ice storm had fused us together, furious cold connecting us and freezing us where we stood.
No, I wouldn’t tilt my head toward him. No, I wouldn’t think about the way his breath curled over my neck, below my ponytail. No, I wouldn’t recall the way his hands moved over my body…
I looked up at him. That was my first mistake. Too close. Not close enough.
“Get out of my way,” I whispered.
“You first,” he hissed at me.
My co-worker cleared her throat from the hallway, reminding me that I had a job to do. I couldn’t stand here all day, trapped in the cobra-like gaze of—well, ‘world’s worst prom date’ would be a good way to describe our relationship. My eyes squeezed shut at the memory.
Somehow I broke free, almost stumbling to the doorway.
“Marcus? You’re here for the reunion?”
My hand went to the doorframe at his mother’s question. Of course, the reunion. She was getting a special teaching award, and he was probably in town to accept it on her behalf. Why else would he deign to show up?
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said behind me. His voice was so slick I almost slipped on it.
“Serena. Serena Rossi.” His mother’s voice was soft in recollection, but I wasn’t sure if she recognized me now, or if she was remembering…
I pasted a smile on my face as I looked back at her. “Enjoy your visit with your son, Mrs. Blake.”
“Thank you, Serena.” I smiled as she winked. She recognized me. Witnessing a patient’s lucid moments gave me so much pleasure, but today it made me nervous.
“You’ll let me cut in for a dance with my son, won’t you?” My stomach flipped at her words. What had he told her, back then? But her voice was soft and amused, so I just nodded.
“Yes, Serena. Save me a dance.”
The tone of her son’s voice was very different.
To say I was distracted for the rest of my shift would have been an understatement. In fact, I was next to useless. Thankfully, I only walked into two walls for the hour I had left at work.
Over the years, I’d managed to put my memories of Marcus Blake right beside Shakespeare on my mental shelf—both of them largely painful experiences punctuated by blissful flashes of comprehension. Wherefore art thou, guilt and shame? Oh yeah, right there—digging into my chest like heartburn from hell.
Michelle gave me some curious looks, but was too polite to ask me why one of the town’s most celebrated exports wanted me to drop dead. I made it through the rest of the evening on auto-pilot, doing everything I could to avoid Mrs. Blake’s room.
It wasn’t until I parked my car in my parents’ garage then dropped my purse on the kitchen counter, that I realized Marcus was the first person to really penetrate the shroud of grief around me. In his presence, I felt a different kind of pain.
It was nothing compared to the pain I’d caused him, though.
I’d developed a crush on the ferocious, silent boy beside me in English class. Slowly, he’d opened up to me. We became friends—at least as much as you can be friends in high school when you’re from two different cliques. Well, I had a clique of sorts, being on the cheer squad. He was his own clique.
God, I was so stupid back then. So shallow and worried about what other people thought all the time, and those “other people” weren’t worth it.
Being on the squad gave me access to the “popular kids,” but I never felt like I fit in. My parents weren’t rich; my dad was an accountant and my mom worked at the library. I was an only child, and I committed the worst crime a teenager could—actually liking my parents. But when in high school, you play along as best you can—until you get played.
All the school assemblies and PSAs reminding us to respect each other’s differences didn’t have a chance of combatting real peer pressure in action. Like when they looked at me with horror at the news that I was going to prom with Marcus Blake.
“Dork-ass Flake?” Two of the football players in our little group of “popular kids” chortled and bumped fists. But that was one of the more polite names I’d heard them call him.
I laughed nervously along with my friends, not about to tell them how I agonized over asking him to the dance. I was already on the fringes of the group; I didn’t want to invite complete social ostracism.
One of their girlfriends snapped her gum in disbelief. “Seriously, Serena? Omigod, I still think one of these days he’s going to come to school in a long trench coat with a machine gun.”
“Please,” I’d said. “He’s not that bad.”
“I get it.” Brandon—I think his name was Brandon?—had draped himself over Miss Bubblemint and gave me a conspiratorial wink. “It’s a pity thing. Serena here is doing community service. Is this, like, an extra credit thing for English?”
I was silent.
“Maybe Rena has made an arrangement with Blake to blow her freak son for a good grade,” one of the guys suggested.
Still, I remained silent. Disgusted, but silent. They were still falling all over themselves, laughing, as I walked away.
Later I regretted that silence. I regretted a lot of things.
In retrospect, it was amazing that anybody survived the pressure of high school. Everything seemed so damn important at the time, and none of it really was.
It was depressingly easy to relive all those memories here, in the house where I grew up. I’d heard a theory that emotions were tied to places, like a kind of psychic fingerprint. My remorse over Marcus was worn into the grooves of the hardwood floor.
It was no surprise that I tossed and turned in bed, my head achingly crowded. Eventually, I went downstairs and sat in front of the TV. I don’t even know what was on. I would have sworn that I hadn’t gotten any sleep at all, if it weren’t for the doorbell waking me up at a little after eight the next morning.
“Okay, okay. I’m coming.” I pulled down my tank top, which had ridden up my torso, smoothing it down over the old pair of scrub pants that I slept in.
My eyes felt swollen and my nose a little stuffed up, like I’d been crying. Probably hay fever, I thought as I looked outside at the sunny May morning. I startled as the doorbell rang again.
The prickling feeling at the back of my neck told me exactly who to expect on my doorstep. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but my heart still skipped as I saw Marcus standing there, his hands in his pocket
s and his eyes hidden by designer sunglasses. He looked as though he was about to leave, his gaze focused on a sleek sports car at the curb.
When I opened the door, the expression on his face looked about as grim as I felt. He, at least, looked fresh and well rested. His coal black hair was still damp from a shower, but he hadn’t bothered shaving. He wore the same pants from yesterday, but beneath a black button-down shirt. The sleeves were pushed up his arms, exposing an expensive-looking watch on one wrist and a tooled leather cuff on the other.
I blinked, questions jumbled up in my head. Where did he stay when he came to town? Had he kept his mother’s house? Did he stay in a hotel, or crash with a friend? A woman? Curiosity and bile rose in my throat—both of which I swallowed back.
We must have stood there, staring at each other, for at least a minute. Then I found my voice, and a little of my backbone with it.
Chapter Three
Marcus
“Have you come to apologize?” Serena asked me. She crossed her arms over her chest, deepening the cleavage her tank top showed off.
I shook my head, trying to refocus. I’d been so shocked when I saw her again the night before that I spent the rest of the evening in a state of confusion.
Confusion, anger, hurt, desire, longing.
For a man who prided himself on being self-aware and in control, I’d felt anything but. She was one of the few people on the planet who could have that effect on me, and I hated it.
Goddamn Serena Rossi.
My hands had tapped nervously on the steering wheel on the way to my usual hotel. When I got into my room I still felt edgy, like I’d had too much coffee. I’d taken a few deep, cleansing breaths, and decided to do a mindfulness exercise to restore my equilibrium.
Hopefully the hotel management wouldn’t mind the damage to the lamp.
Now I stood on her doorstep, and I wasn’t even sure what I was doing here. Apologize? My mind flashed on the way my mom recognized Serena—the friendly smile on her face—and something curdled in my stomach.
Shit. I was going to have to apologize.
She had stepped back into the house and was about to slam the door, when I wedged my foot in.
“I’m so—I’m sorry.” I stared down at her unpolished toes. They flexed, like she was a cat getting ready to pounce. Escape.
Serena sighed. “No, I’m…” She trailed off, and I looked up at her. Her eyes looked bluer than I remembered, but they were also bloodshot. “How about breakfast? I think we need to—I’d like to talk.”
I blinked. “You’re not ashamed to be seen with me?”
Her mouth tightened at the acid in my tone. “Marcus.”
I waved a hand. “Sorry. Reflex, I guess. Go get changed. I’ll wait.”
Being here, seeing her, seemed to trigger all my old instincts. The desire to hide from the beautiful blonde cheerleader battled with the desire to open up to her. It brought back the supercilious belief that I was smarter than she was, but she was still better than me.
For all that she’d said we needed to talk, we said nothing on the way to the diner by the high school. There were any number of cute bistros and brunch places, but by unspoken agreement we ended up at the scene of the crime. Well, one of the crimes.
We ordered then sat in an awkward silence. A smile teased at my mouth as I watched her grab the sugar.
“You still take your cream and sugar with a little coffee?”
She froze, the spoon still in her hand and the coffee swirling around it. “I can’t believe you remember that,” she said faintly, looking up at me.
I shrugged. Sometimes my memory was my downfall, especially when it came to her. “Some things don’t change in people.”
“You still drink yours—”
“Black as my heart, bitter as my soul.” I raised my white porcelain mug in a mock toast as her face flamed.
“I sent you so many emails,” she said.
I knew that. I’d seen them collect in my inbox. They sat there for that whole summer after graduation, taunting me. Mocking me. Until I left for college and I mercilessly deleted everything, without even opening one of them up. I never thought I’d regret not reading them, until now.
She twisted a paper napkin between her fingers. No manicure on her now, not like the white tips she’d had in high school. My gaze traveled up her arms, and I looked at her—really looked at her.
Her blonde hair was pulled back into a casual ponytail, freckles peppering her face without a mask of foundation to hide them. There were lines around her eyes that weren’t there before, and her bottom lip was pink from her biting it nervously, not from carefully applied lip gloss.
Serena Rossi was no longer the bubbly cheerleader that I crushed on back then, and who crushed me. The realization startled me; even though it made perfect sense that she’d changed. I had, after all. She was still beautiful, only now her… “realness” made her even more dangerous.
A line appeared in her forehead. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I picked you up once or twice, remember?” Memory like a steel trap—with claws just as sharp.
“Yeah, but I only just—” She dropped the napkin and reached for her coffee mug. “I moved back around six months ago. When my parents died.”
Oh.
It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d moved on in life, like I had. Somehow I imagined her sitting in her room for the past ten years, like Miss Havisham in a dusty wedding dress. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” She gave me a weak smile.
My mouth opened, then shut again. What was the polite way to—?
“Drunk driver,” she said as the waitress dumped our plates on the table. “Anyhow, I didn’t want to sell the house—yet—and I had no reason to not to come back.”
“No husband? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?” No, I wasn’t fishing. I was just… curious.
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Marcus. My experience with you turned me off men forever. What the hell?”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.” I stiffened.
“Yes, you did. But I’m more offended on behalf of the gay community for such a dumb, narcissistic assumption. I thought Mister ‘Help Yourself’ was more enlightened than that.” She brandished a fork with one of her air quotes, then stabbed at her eggs.
“Fair enough. It would be more likely that—”
Snort. “I would turn you off women?”
“Now who’s being narcissistic?”
“Well, did I?”
My body heated, and I shifted on the vinyl bench seat. My gaze wandered over the curve of her neck, the line of her shoulders, the faint impression of a lacy bra embossing her blouse. I could tell the moment she realized I was checking her out, because her nipples tightened and pressed against the thin material. She sucked in a sharp breath, but said nothing.
So I looked my fill. And, with her pulse thumping in her throat, she let me.
“No,” I said slowly, reaching for my fork. “You didn’t turn me off women.”
We ate in silence for a moment. Rather than a chilly, awkward gulf between us, though, the air around our booth seemed charged. Expectant. It was what I probably would have described in a talk as “active calm.”
“I-I don’t expect you to forget what I did,” Serena said in a low voice. “But I’m hoping you can forgive me someday.”
I made a non-committal noise in the back of my throat.
“You seemed to do okay for yourself,” Serena said. “And your mom is doing pretty well, isn’t she? It’s been nice to see her again. You must be really proud of this award thing.”
I nodded, the guilt over not visiting often enough needling me. “I could do without the whole reunion presentation thing, though.” I waved my hand, like I could make it disappear. I just hoped I could get out of town in the next week without—
“Marcus Blake!” A hand slammed between my shoulder blades, almost making me choke.
I dropped my toast just as Principa
l Lemmon dropped onto the bench beside Serena. He beamed at me. “You’re a hard man to get a hold of!”
On purpose, asshole. Serena raised a conspiratorial eyebrow at me. Oh yeah, she knew I’d been avoiding him. She could probably guess that I’d been avoiding this whole stupid thing.
“—haven’t been responding to my emails,” Lemmon was saying. “But now that I have you, I’m going to pin you down for the valedictorian speech at the reunion. I know you’re a celebrity now, but hopefully we can convince you to waive your fee for your alma mater.”
He chuckled before bulldozing on. “Something inspiring, something motivational from your last book. Oh, I wish we had the budget to give every graduating senior a copy. You could be like the new, modern version of Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” He glanced out the window, grumbling under his breath. “Maybe that’d light a fire under their collective backsides. Lazy, entitled—”
My gaze fixed on Serena, I murmured, “’Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.’”
Her eyes widened.
Lemmon blinked. “Excellent! See you at the meeting tomorrow, Serena. Do what you have to do to convince him.” He jerked his chin toward me and slapped the table as he stood. My knife fell off the edge of my plate, peanut butter grazing my leather cuff.
“Yes, sir.” She nodded then hid behind her coffee mug. I was pretty sure it was empty, but she tipped it back as though it was water in the desert.
I leaned forward, my hands planted on the scarred diner table. “Serena,” I growled, “are you organizing this reunion?”
Apparently there was enough coffee left in her cup for her to choke on it. At least she had the grace to flush with embarrassment. “I kind of got volunteered.”
“Traitor.”
“I was at a low point. They got me at my weakest.” She was joking, but I suspected that there was some painful truth in it. “You’ll give the speech? I mean—you are a big-time motivational speaker.”
My eyebrow lifted. The truth was that stroking my ego was usually a pretty good way around my defenses—except in the case of Serena. Did I really want to give this stupid grown-up prom more time and attention than it already required?
